Author: Blake

I have been spending more time doing art lately, recently diving back into digital painting, practicing basic sketching, drawing, painting as well as experimenting with color. So if you’ve stumbled upon my blog by jumping from something I drew, then that’s pretty cool. I am an amateur artist (so amateur I use the term self-referentially almost jokingly), but I finally decided I’d reached a quality level that I don’t think is too embarrassing. I’ve always enjoyed making art, mostly a doodling over the years. Artistic skill I think is like any other skill, in that it requires study and practice,...

Enough of my friends and co-workers were curious about what’s been going with me lately that I decided to write about it, to inform the concerned, as I left a few people hanging. So for those interested, I had back surgery on 2/16 and am taking the next few weeks off work to recover. I herniated disc about 3 years ago (lower lumbar 4) and have been dealing with back pain ever since. If you’ve seen me lately, you know I’ve been carrying a limp around for several months, as the protrusion against my spinal cord has been getting worse...

so i’ve been busily working on the latest and greatest, and i’ve been pretty quiet about it. today i am happy to announce the integration of the leap motion controller! so what is leap motion? so glad you asked… check it out. in short, the device tracks the movement of your hands, and translates that information to your computer. once i caught wind of this brand new device, i got one and instantly started playing around with it. remember minority report? where cops in the future wave their hands around to move stuff around on their futuristic screens? yeah me...

version 1.3.0 has finally made it other door! due to some technical issues, i was able to continue work on the game, but was unable to release it to the appstore, and was essentially in limbo. for that reason, i spent a lot of time fixing stuff that players hopefully did not even notice originally, and the underlying game logic was improved significantly for advanced mechanics (machine part interactions with buttons, doors, locks, etc…) and new mechanics (upcoming stuff in the next release). i also made the game free on the appstore with this release, to try to reach more...

it’s been a while coming but i’ve got a batch of levels nearing finalization. due to some technical issues with ios and general busyness with my waking life, it took me longer than i had hoped. i’m looking forward to working on art and music now that most of the technical stuff is working. i’m tentatively calling the release ‘shadow seizure’ as it involves using the beem to reanimate light powered mechanisms that have been frozen from disuse. machine parts are not new, but were very briefly demonstrated in the first release. the next sector will use more complex behaviors...

i was agonizing over some truly ugly internet speak in a facebook post recently, when i realized everyone must think i’m also too lazy to use my hard earned english writing skills. i don’t use uppercase when i type. a friend at work asked me about it a while ago, and now i realize it probably works against me in an age where almost all communication i deal with on a daily basis is in written form. i don’t plan on changing anything, but i do actually have a reason for it. there’s a story to it, and i’m in...

a handful of levels with new mechanics are finally starting to come together. bugs encountered while trying to make new levels are down to an all time low, which means i can finally focus more on level design and less on mechanics. the next release will include levels that use what i’m calling ‘machine parts’ which are a cool system that manages changing the state of the level through rotating or moving components. it’s actually already used in a couple of levels in the current version, but it took a decent amount of work to refine it to the point...

i spent a decent amount of time in sort of design limbo, and am still trying to figure out what i should release next. since the whole release process is such a pain through itunes, i think i will build up a decent chunk of stuff before i put out the next version. that means it will be a sizable release, it just won’t be out there for a while. i don’t have anyone battering down my door to do anything really, so no pressure. just trying to get something released initially was stressful enough, so now i can do...

the latest release has been submitted to the appstore, and here’s the gist! new sector with levels, art, and music – the hall of echoes new mechanic: portals – beem goes in one end, comes out the other i spent some time on arting on some older backgrounds to make them look a little better i chipped the back of all the krystles off, so the direction they are facing is clear i swapped out a few orbs for switch orbs, they have a little gear icon to indicate they do something (open a door, rotate something, etc…). general refinements...

thanks to all around awesome smart dude scott hanselman for pointing out that i am not blogging enough. the idea has reinvigorated me to write more. even if no one cares, its a nice way to put it all somewhere before twitter, facebook, and eventually my ancient dimensia-ridden brain disappear from existence someday. so, what the hell was i thinking? one day i wanted to play a game. after looking around on the internet for a while, i couldn’t find it. there were no flash games that did what i wanted, and all games on all phones sucked. i’ll make...